The aim of this paper is to account for the dilemmas and difficulties a social democratic approach to crime and security has always faced in the context of the modern state, to examine the historical solutions sought to these difficulties, to identify some of the new challenges to have emerged over the past 30 years or so - in particular the challenges posed by neo-liberalism and globalization, and to assess the prospects of a new wave of social democratic crime and security policy in the face of the combination of new and old challenges. Just as social democracy has always been ambiguously poised between reformism and more radical forms of socialism, social democratic crime and security policy has also always been uneasily located between its reformist premise - stressing consent, rehabilitation and cultural inclusion and its radical premise - stressing the material basis of any genuine programme of societal security. This tension, amplified by the recent challenges posed by neo-liberalism and globalization, underpins the explanation and the prognosis offered by the paper.